China still hasn't come to grips with Tiananmen Square massacre

The date of June 4, 1989, is kept alive not only by those who lived through the crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, but also by the Chinese government's inability to come to terms with the wound it inflicted upon itself.

Twenty-five years ago, in the face of months-long, multi-city popular demonstrations for greater freedoms, China's leaders authorized the use of military force against unarmed protesters, killing hundreds of Chinese citizens in the process.

The failure of successive Chinese leaders to offer a public accounting or expression of regret for what transpired that day leaves them grasping for the legitimacy they desire at home and the leadership they seek abroad.

Every year, as the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown approaches, Beijing follows the same script. The leadership pre-emptively arrests prominent journalists, artists, scholars and lawyers who might raise the specter of June 4.

And it engages in a game of Whac-A-Mole. As each mention of Tiananmen Square pops up on the Internet, the government bats it down.

Denying history

This year, for example, Kong Qingdong, a Peking University professor and descendant of Confucius, reportedly posted the following in response to a soldier's defense of the government's actions on June 4: "There was no riot. It was just framing them after you bloodily mowed them down. Can you name one student who was rioting?"

Censors quickly deleted the post.

Yet collective memory is powerful. Beijing must already contend with a continuous trickle of tortured personal accounts by those who participated in the upheaval of the Chinese Cultural Revolution more than four decades ago. Tiananmen, while much briefer in duration, is far more recent and, thanks to the presence of the foreign news media, was witnessed by more of the world than the Cultural Revolution. No matter how hard Beijing tries to ignore or revise its history, the facts are there for the world to see.

The result is that Beijing is stuck. Even as China has transformed into a global power through its economic achievements and growing military prowess, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party's ambitions for legitimacy at home and abroad remain mostly unrealized. Within China, the party's mad dash to legitimize itself in the eyes of the Chinese people through anti-corruption efforts, self-criticism and attempts to "learn from the people" all fall short in the face (AT)of the party's refusal to deal with its own history.

How can the people's trust be granted to a leadership that cannot acknowledge past mistakes?

Beijing's broader political ambitions also demand an honest historical reckoning.

Shunning democracy

Xi has cast aside democracy, a multiparty system, constitutionalism and all other forms of traditional Western government in favor of a system uniquely Chinese that might nonetheless serve as a model for others.

As the government-supported Global Times noted in an editorial in late May, "As Western democracy has thrown many small countries into disorder, more and more people began to realize that destructive elements may be activated if China adopts it. Fortunately, China has the wisdom and capability to seek an independent political path. ? China's political experiment in universal values will be borne out eventually."

Yet Tiananmen, along with other taboo topics in the Communist Party's history, remains a substantial stumbling block to such aspirations. Without accounting for the political trials of the past, Beijing cannot hope to win over the rest of the world. It has yet even to convince the people of Hong Kong or Taiwan that it has found the silver governance bullet. Indeed, Hong Kong remains the site of the largest demonstrations on the Tiananmen Square anniversaries.

A country is understood in good measure through its history -- its triumphs, its losses, the pain it inflicts on others and the damage it does to itself. Insisting on a historical narrative that many inside and outside China know to be untrue casts a long shadow over the Communist Party's claims to legitimacy and leadership. The Chinese leadership can't change its history, but it can and should choose to address it openly.

Elizabeth Economy is C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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China still hasn't come to grips with Tiananmen Square massacre

The date of June 4, 1989, is kept alive not only by those who lived through the crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, but also by the Chinese government's inability to come to terms with the wound